


Mind's Special Issue on the Recent Archival Findings at Kaliningrad: A Final Thought

by CorpseBrigadier



Category: Philosophy RPF
Genre: Academia, Aliens, Extra Treat, Footnotes, Other, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2020-11-15 06:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20861756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/pseuds/CorpseBrigadier
Summary: "Certainly, I think most academics found the exclamation "Holy shitballs, I've just been railed by aliens!" to be out of keeping with their vision of the historical Kant [...]"





	Mind's Special Issue on the Recent Archival Findings at Kaliningrad: A Final Thought

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seinmit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seinmit/gifts).

> Philosophy is not my field, and my apologies if I get any element of Kantian philosophy grossly wrong or if I have made a terrible misstep in selecting the academic journal for this publication. I only read _The Critique of Pure Reason_ once and my reaction to it was markedly similar to the narrator's department chair. I also am not certain that I have it within me to imitate the prose stylings of Immanuel Kant himself, so I have written about Kant in a voice I suspect is familiar to many in the academy.

**A. Sorenson**

* * *

I would first like to thank _Mind_ for dedicating this special electronic issue to a topic of such pressing and immediate concern to the scholarly community. I realize that the editors have had—as we all have had—very short time in which to respond to this unprecedented event in the study of philosophy, and the grace and professional rigor with which they have arranged this forum deserves all possible praise.

I would like in this response to first state that I am not going to join many of my colleagues in outright declaring Dr. Tsoukalos' discovery to be his own fabrication or to even be a deliberate hoax perpetrated against him. While there has been some dissent among those forensic experts called in to authenticate the documents, it is generally agreed that the papers in question date from the late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century and match all known samples of the alleged author's handwriting. I furthermore wish to note, based on what we have previously seen of Dr. Tsoukalos' writing, he does not appear to have the skills necessary to fabricate a decent literature review, let alone an historical discovery of this magnitude, and there are self-evident reasons he went into archival studies instead of continuing to publish analytic works in his field.[1]

This is not to say, however, that we must accept the so-called "Noumenoid Papers" to have been penned unquestionably and solely by Immanuel Kant. As many have observed, such an earth-shattering discovery as the Noumenoids would doubtlessly have resulted in a number of alterations to Kant's philosophy that are not born out by history. While there are gestures towards imagining both a new moral philosophy and a new framework for the operation of reason, the sketches of these theories are sparse enough that all experts consulted regarding them are hesitant to definitively name them as Kantian. While the recently unearthed "C" version of the Transcendental Deduction is largely complete and may shed further light on this matter, thus far there has been nobody willing to attempt an analysis. The chair of my department, upon being told of its existence, was found to have locked himself in his office for the remainder of the day where he appears to have single-handedly analyzed the full contents of a bottle of brandy before being driven home by one of his advisees.[2]

However, many of us have spent the majority of our time speculating as to how and to what extent Kant may have reformulated his theories following a supposed revelation that an alien species existed and that they had some manner of sensory apparatus that enabled them to immediately and unquestioningly perceive things-as-they-are in a way comparable only to human accounts of gnosis. This exercise in reconstructing the treatises that _may have been_, tantalizing as it must be to those in our profession, is ultimately one of historical fiction, and it has largely ignored the less savory elements of the historical evidence presently mounting. The focus of our community's investigation into the Noumenoids has been, by and large, limited to the spartan outlines for future works found in the collection, which most of us find to be inconclusive. We have paid only a fraction of this attention to—as Dr. Wiffleberger names it—the "crude and licentious forgery" that has been presented as Kant's personal accounting of his experiences with the Noumenoids.

Perhaps it is a general discomfort with the thought of Kant as a sexual being that has led to such a profound silence on his descriptions of coupling with Noumenoid emissaries. Certainly, I think most academics found the exclamation "Holy shitballs, I've just been railed by aliens!" to be out of keeping with their vision of the historical Kant, regardless of the testimony of historians and archivists that this is—in fact—what the uncovered August 20, 1799 diary entry reads and that there is no present evidence indicating it to have been written by anyone other than Kant himself. What I would like to propose in this response is that we re-center our investigation such that we are not only inquiring what it means for Kant to have believed himself to be visited by the Noumenoids but also to have known them carnally.

What I will touch upon here is the documents' description of what Kant (or whomever we take the author of the document to be) terms the “organs of apprehension” by which Noumenoids receive their unmitigated understanding of reality unencumbered by any such doubts or questions as were raised regarding empiricist models of knowledge. How Kant could have recognized the functioning of such organs as being relayed truthfully to him is one of the many points upon which scholars have attacked the authenticity of these documents—as it is assumed that Kant could be offered no proof of the Noumenoids’ assertions.

In looking to descriptions of the organs of apprehension, however, I would like to differ with the claim of Drs. Finklestein and Sokolov that the author was just re-imagining Descartes’ pineal gland as an exterior organ. While we have no drawings of the appendage in question, we certainly know that it is an appendage. I would like to underscore that something that is missing from the account of Kant’s “railing”—as it is termed—is an exacting description as to how and with what device he was railed. One would assume, based on how vastly the author of these documents finds Noumenoid physiology to differ from human physiology, that their sexual organs might well differ wildly from our own. I will raise here the possibility that the organ of apprehension and the sexual organ with which it is alleged Kant was penetrated are one and the same.

While this is largely speculative (as most of the commentary reacting to this discovery has been), I want to suggest that Kant’s descriptions of sexual congress and orgasm, in which he states “all _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ reasoning dissolved into an ecstatic hyper-awareness of bodies in action as the Noumenoid archons bent me over a table and filled my every hole” may not just be the philosophically-inflected language of a man enjoying something utterly unphilosophical. It may be that this was a literal depiction of the effects of Noumenoid intercourse, and that the alleged powers of differing apprehension may be transferred through such acts. It might certainly go some ways towards explaining why the Noumenoids, if they really exist, should take such an interest in the sundry holes of an aged and infirm transcendental philosopher.

This, I argue, is why the philosophical work found within this collection strikes us as so un-Kantian. It was, after a fashion, not produced by Kant in his capacity as a reasoning man but rather by a Kant in the throes of uniquely Noumenoid revelations. The sketches in which both elements of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ and significant portions of his recent _Metaphysics of Morals_ seem to be reworked may not, in fact, be the work of _any_ reasoning human being but rather the work of a somebody or something operating according to a uniquely Noumenoid mechanics of cognition. This would explain why, in the later absence of the Noumenoids, he was not able to complete any revisions or effectively share his findings. Our focus should never have been on the philosophical documents, but on the personal accounts that precede their production.

To test my theories, I have recently secured funding by means of an internal grant to undertake a course of what I have termed “field research.” My aim for this project will be to make contact with the Noumenoids myself and personally assess my belief that they possess some mechanisms of reason and apprehension hitherto unknown to terrestrial entities. This may, in fact, involve being "railed" myself as it were, which is not—in and of itself—any new experience for a member of a philosophy department seeking grant money. My hopes, in addition to securing new insights to the benefit of humanity, also include securing new insights to the benefit of the _humanities_. I firmly believe, if nothing else, that those bastards in STEM will finally be put in their place once we are established as the first in the academy to fuck ourselves some aliens.

To close with, it is my hope, as I'm sure that it is all of our hopes, that Dr. Tsoukalos' discovery will be a cause for new and bold explorations of the field and that many scholars might undertake novel and groundbreaking researches in the same vein I propose. I anticipate addressing the community again in another issue, where I will endeavor to make a complete and lurid account of my findings. 

* * *

_Aloysius Sorenson earned his Ph.D. from an institution that requests we do not name them in this publication. He teaches as an associate professor at another institution that has made a similar plea. The editorial board of Mind is currently in discussions as to how best to handle our decision to invite him to write the afterward to this issue, and we would like to assure our readers that he will have to seek another journal for the submission of his future publications._

**Author's Note:**

> [1] I freely confess that this attack is unprofessional and out of keeping with the behavior expected of a scholar of my caliber. I will direct those who have complaints regarding it to read my forthcoming essay “I Have Tenure and You Cowards Can Lick my Balls” which will be appearing in the _Chronicle of Higher Education._
> 
> [2] His only commentary on the document (as relayed by the very diligent graduate student in question) was "There can't be another one. I thought it couldn't hurt me anymore."
> 
> * * *
> 
> See my [profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/profile) for notes on remixes, podfic, derivative works, and constructive criticism.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Novel Method of Physical Manifestation in a Pair of Subjects](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22664830) by [Nedrika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nedrika/pseuds/Nedrika)


End file.
